“Mazie,” he thought to himself, “Mazie will take us in.”
Ten minutes later, he and the girl were speeding toward the home of Mazie, the girl pal of Johnny’s boyhood days.
It was a very much surprised Mazie who at last answered Johnny’s repeated ringing of her bell, but when she saw it was Johnny who called she at once invited him to join her in the kitchen, the proper place to entertain a friend who calls at three in the morning in a grimy fireman’s uniform.
Mazie was a plump young lady. The bloom on her cheeks was as natural as the brown of her abundant hair. A sincere, honest, healthy girl she was—just the kind to be pal to a boy like Johnny.
“Mazie,” said Johnny as he entered the kitchen and sat down to watch her light the gas, “this is a little girl I found. I have a notion she’s hungry—are you?” he turned to the girl.
The girl nodded her head.
“What’s your name?”
“Tillie McFadden.”
It was a strange story that Tillie McFadden told over Mazie’s cold lunch and steaming cocoa. She truly had no home. Weeks before—she did not now how many—her mother had died. Neighbors had come in. They had talked of an orphan asylum for her. She had not known quite what that was, but it had frightened her. She ran away. A corner newstand man had allowed her to sell papers for him. With these few pennies she had bought food. For three nights she had slept on a bed of shavings in a barrel back of a crockery store.
Then, while prowling round a school house at night, she had discovered a basement window with a broken catch. She had climbed in and, having made her way to the upper story which was used as a gymnasium, had slept on wrestling mats. Since this was better than the barrel, like some stray kitten that has found its way out of the dark and the cold, she had made her home there.